Airline Biz Blog

The U.S. Department of Transportation said Thursday that it is fining Southwest Airlines $200,000 for allegedly violating DOT’s rules on fare advertising.

In addition, Southwest must pay $100,000 from a previous fine for the same type of violations. The DOT had suspended that penalty upon Southwest’s pledge to correct the prior violations.

It said Southwest had engaged in “unfair and deceptive practices and unfair methods of competition” when it advertised a fare sale last October out of Atlanta.

“DOT’s full-fare advertising rules were put into place to ensure that consumers are not deceived when they search for plane tickets,” U.S. Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx said in the department’s announcement.

“Consumers have rights, and DOT will continue to take enforcement action against carriers and ticket agents when our price advertising rules are violated,” Fox said.

Here’s what the DOT said about Southwest’s misdeeds:

In October 2013, Southwest ran a television advertisement on eight networks in the Atlanta area advertising $59 sale fares to New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago on certain dates. An investigation by DOT’s Aviation Enforcement Office revealed that Southwest did not have any seats available for $59 between Atlanta and any of the three quoted cities on any of the applicable travel dates.

By advertising fares for which no seats were available at all, Southwest violated the full fare advertising rule and engaged in prohibited unfair and deceptive practices.

Today’s order and the order issued in 2013 both stem from violations of the same federal regulation, which requires that any advertisement or solicitation for air transportation that states a price for such transportation state the entire price to be paid. In both cases, Southwest advertised fares for which there were not a reasonable number of seats available.

By violating the same regulation again within one year, Southwest also violated the cease and desist provision of the order issued in 2013, and was immediately required to pay $100,000, half of the original civil penalty which was suspended from the previous order.

This time, DOT didn’t suspend any part of the new penalty.

“In mitigation, Southwest states that it believes the Atlanta fare sale was beneficial to consumers both in Atlanta and across Southwest’s system. Southwest states that over 14,000 consumers in Atlanta and 313,000 consumers nationwide benefited from the sale,” the department said in its full order.

“In addition, Southwest states that the mention of three cities that were not part of the fare sale in the audio portion of the TV advertisement was an inadvertent error that resulted from a flawed review of advertising copy language,” DOT stated.

“Southwest states that it regrets this mistake and as soon as the company became aware of it, Southwest immediately took steps to pull all of the incorrect advertisements off the air, the vast majority in the same day. Southwest states that this mistake was unintentional and safeguards have been put in place to ensure such an error does not occur in future sales,” the department said.

Southwest Airlines spokeswoman Brandy King offered the same explanation.

“Unfortunately, the audio portion of the TV advertisement incorrectly stated three cities that were never intended to be a part of the $59 sale (New York, Los Angeles and Chicago). As soon as we became aware of our mistake, we pulled all incorrect advertisements off the air,” King said.

“Despite our error, the sale provided significant savings to consumers in Atlanta and across the country – with more than 300,000 consumers saving millions of dollars,” she said.

The previous case involved a fare sale announced Jan. 11, 2013, for travel on Feb. 14, 2013. In a July 30, 2013, order, DOT said the carrier didn’t have a “reasonable number of seats available” on a number of routes included in the sale.

In addition, Southwest advertised a $66 fare between Dallas and Branson, Mo., for March 1-21, 2013. The DOT said no seats were made available at that fare.

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Terry Maxon writes about items of interest to travelers and the aviation community.